Ja: Caricom talking about letting Haiti back in

ST GEORGE'S, Grenada - Caribbean Community leaders will today announce their conditionalities for the re-admittance of Haiti to the council of the Community, Caricom's chairman Dr Keith Mitchell said last night.

But there were suggestions that while the document will insist that the interim administration of Gerard Latortue show progress towards a return to democracy, the document will leave enough room for an accommodation with Port-au-Prince.

"We are moving in the direction of a resolution and a statement to be approved tomorrow by all leaders would speak for itself," Mitchell, the Grenadian prime minister, told reporters.

Haiti's chair at Caricom's meetings has remained vacant since February when President Jean-Bertrand Aristide left the country in what he claimed to have been a US-orchestrated kidnapping, which the Americans vehemently deny.

The Community had up to now also declined to recognise Haiti's interim government headed by Latortue, who quarrelled with regional leaders over their support of Aristide.
But Mitchell indicated that sufficient progress was being made in Haiti for there now to be a "consensus statement" allowing the French-speaking country back into Caricom.

How come Caricom didn't suspend Haiti's membership when they thought Aristide had rigged the last election?